The effects of terrorism on girls’ access to education: a case study of swat valley (of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Pakistan

Abstract

Using Women Rights and the Feminist theory on Education, the thesis is aimed to evaluate the effects of terrorism on females of Mingora, Swat, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwah Province in Pakistan. The objective is to analyze the damages caused by extremists to girls’ education in terms of barring them from attending schools and institutions, assassinating and injuring teachers and students, inflicting and causing damages to infrastructure by bombing and destroying schools and college buildings. Secondary data was used as well as video link and phone call interviews as well as the researchers’ observations and documents are also used as the means of data collection. The thesis finds that female students of Swat were vulnerable to severe human rights abuses. These students struggled to recover from the miseries inflicted upon them i.e. ban on girls’ education, oppression of human rights especially women’s right, displacement, social and psychological pressures. As for the social and cultural dimensions, females in general and girls’ students in particular got much more affected than their male counterparts in Mingora, the Swat region. Their economic, cultural and social liberties were forcefully seized. The slow process of rehabilitation has put a lot of negative mental and psychological effects on the sufferers. Recommendations are suggested for policy implications. To reinvigorate and restructure the provincial educational system, the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province also needs to bring into action its Act XII-2017 that ensures building a mechanism for the provision of free and compulsory education to the age group of 5 to 16. In addition, to enforce the National Action Plan which was agreed upon by the National Security Council (NSC) for the purpose of eradicating extremists’ ideology from the society by confiscating the hate material, arresting and punishing the propagators of religious hatred, social and gender discriminators.